Freedom of speech is indispensable for any country . . . But I don’t think you understand the full situation in China.

One month ago, veteran journalist and CMP fellow Zhang Ping (张平), who writes under the penname Chang Ping (长平), was visited at the offices of Guangdong’s official Nanfang Daily by state security police who wished to have a “chat.” At roughly the same time, propaganda authorities issued an order preventing Zhang from writing editorials for Southern Weekly and Southern Metropolis Daily, both respected commercial spin-offs of Nanfang Daily where his writings have appeared for years.
Now a researcher at the Nanfang Daily Newspapers Communications Research Institute (南都传播研究院), Zhang was formerly director of the news desk at Southern Weekend and a deputy editor at Southern Metropolis Weekly.
In a recent interview with Taiwan’s Want Daily (旺报) Zhang speaks about the current state of media in China and the prospects for change. A portion of the interview follows:

Want: In recent years, we’ve seen quite a number of editorials talking about how controls on the media have tightened in China. Some people have even talked about the rise of a “new nationalism” in China [as something contributing to curbs on the press]. How do you view these trends?
Chang Ping: On the issue of press controls, you can say that things have become more technical in recent years. Media control is now more concrete (更具体) and more focused (更到位) than it once was. A decade ago, during the Jiang Zemin era, the authorities lacked robust technical controls on the Internet side, so print media would often receive orders [from propaganda authorities] saying things like: “Do not re-print such-and-such information from the web, or such-and-such information is rumor.” These days, we don’t often see bans of this kind. Rather, it’s the Internet [sites] receiving bans like, “Do not re-post news from Southern Metropolis Daily.” This is because web controls have now become more systematized (有序了) and effective. If there is something problematic at a website, it can now be deleted directly. There’s no need to send an order down to the newspapers [about Internet content]. Quite the contrary, it’s often the newspapers that are often now the problem. This is an interesting shift.
The Battle of Darkness and Light
About your other question, there have been developments in terms of statism (国家主义) and nationalism (民族主义) over the past few years. This is a result, in fact, of national education and propaganda since 1989. [After the crackdown on June 4, 1989] there was a backlash against bourgeois liberalization (资产阶级自由化) in China. Many liberal intellectuals either left [China], or could no longer voice the ideas they had originally. Everyone started heading in the direction of National Studies (国学). The famous historian Li Zehou (李泽厚) has described the situation by saying that “thinkers have faded out and scholars risen to prominence,” [meaning there was less emphasis on originating ideas and more emphasis on resurrecting old ideas.]
This change was not a natural progression of any kind. It was just that thinkers had no choice but to fade into the background, because the atmosphere of political pressure was not conducive to their work. So everyone returned to the dusty classics. At the same time, the authorities also wanted to use National Studies to harp on the idea of the national spirit (民族精神). Over time an entire generation was educated this way. Add to this China’s historical sense of anger and victimization over the past century and you have a recipe for rising nationalism.
When you add more robust technical controls on the Internet to this social equation, control of the media becomes a much easier matter.
But the situation is actually quite complex. On the one hand, you have continued breakthroughs in communications technology. Services like Twitter are in some ways very difficult to control. On the other hand, younger Chinese who have been reared on the idea of nationalism will slowly mature and begin their own process of self-examination — their ideas will no longer be so “pure.” These changes will heap new trouble on the authorities [in terms of information control]. So compared to the past, you can say that controls are tighter now, but it’s also true that new cracks are emerging all the time, and new threads of light creeping in. It’s difficult for anyone to say which of these forces is stronger. We are still in the midst of change.
When Party Papers Must Face the Market
Want: Many things have happened in China’s media this year. During the National People’s Congress, for example, 13 newspapers signed a joint editorial calling for an end to China’s household registration system. Then we had Hubei Party Secretary Li Hongzhong (李鸿忠) grabbing a digital recorder from a news reporter and being widely criticized. We had Chinese media professionals signing a petition against the Chongqing Morning Post for its handling of police detentions of three of its reporters. And we have many journalists being issued with arrest warrants or otherwise threatened. Chinese journalists have shown a strong sense of idealism and have opposed suppression [of news and ideas]. Could you share your own observations on this?
Chang Ping: First of all, we can see that the very nature and role of the media is changing in China. Look for example at the Li Hongzhong case. In the past, only party media would have been able to gain access to the National People’s Congress. In the past, journalists generally couldn’t get access. If they did get access, they wouldn’t dare ask the kind of questions [that were asked of Li Hongzhong]. And if, by chance, they did ask those kinds of questions they couldn’t count on support from their newspapers. The interests of the top leaders running China’s newspapers lie with officialdom, [not with journalism or media per se].
Now, even the [official] People’s Daily must face up to the realities of the market, so it launches [the commercially-operated] Beijing Times. The journalist Li Hongzhong so rudely berated was from the Beijing Times. The interests of the leaders at the Beijing Times newspaper lie with the market. They have to run a newspaper that people will read, with advertisements. So from this standpoint they also have to support their journalists in sticking out their necks and asking different sorts of questions.
This is an unavoidable trend, because media are peeling away from their [traditional] propaganda role and heading in the direction of the market, so it’s no longer “media first, market second.” New media like Netease and Tencent have now pushed into other business areas, like online games, looking to turn a profit first and serve as media second.
We also see more idealistic journalists feeling constrained and frustrated by media controls, and when the opportunity arises, the animus of the market and the animus of professionalism can combine to make for opposition [to media controls through harder hitting coverage]. Many of these professionals are those who were influenced by events of the 1980s, and they hope for more open media policies. With the development of media in recent years, ideas like professionalism and independence have become more deeply rooted in the media.
We Often Band Together
Another issue is the growing pluralism of media platforms [in China]. Traditionally, joint efforts at resistance were quite risky, but now there are so many online tools that can be used. We can step out quickly and safely, and these factors can come together in a gesture of defiance.
The Li Hongzhong case resulted in some compromise, of course . . . And in the Chongqing Morning Post case, the signers [of the petition] did not target the authorities, and this was a strategic form of opposition . . . Besides, there are just too many things the authorities have to handle, and relatively speaking, journalists are quite cautious in their approach, so they don’t want to prompt harsh action from the authorities.
The household registration system is a pretty safe topic about which there is a lot of discussion. There is a consensus both outside and inside the system that it needs to be reformed, and everyone knows it’s difficult to sustain. So the organizers of the joint editorial wanted to push on this issue, and it was probably the method they chose, of “uniting together,” that most angered propaganda organs. They wanted to put a stop to this trend. In fact, we often unite together in the media — it’s just that usually these are [united efforts] orchestrated by the propaganda organs themselves. . .
Want: Lately, a number of mainland leaders have experimented with online democracy and online political debate, and we’ve seen the emergence of Wu Hao (伍皓), [a top propaganda official in Yunnan province], a more enlightened sort of propaganda official. How do you see this?
Chang Ping: This is a form of control, a way of using “closeness to the people” (亲民) to make them feel that you’re standing on the same side. In a truly democratic society there is no need for an official to say you can do this, or you can do that, so this is somewhat absurd.
Should Leaders Top the Headlines?
It’s just like [Guangdong Party Secretary] Wang Yang (汪洋) saying to the media that they shouldn’t put him in the banner headlines. Seen from another perspective that’s just another form of intrusion on the media. In the past, visits by officials and such things were always put in the banner headlines, and no one cared to read this stuff. But as a top local leader, it’s only natural that you should become a focus of the news, because you have so much power vested in you and so many resources at your disposal. So the media should monitor you. In fact, you should be in the headlines. Why are you suggesting media shouldn’t report about you?

They were equipped with police truncheons, attack dogs, private jails and special armored vehicles. The whole escort organization, for so it was called, was staffed much like a military outfit: one political commissar, one battalion chief, three captains, a central battalion made up of two to three companies, and seven or eight men to a company. They were outfitted just like riot police, with the same uniforms and helmets. On their left and right shoulders were dark patches emblazoned with white characters: “Special Service.”
And this entire apparatus of violence was operated as a private enterprise. Put another way, this was the private militia of legend. And the fact that this private militia could operate for so many years is something that leaves us all staring speechlessly.
Hired By Local Governments
If this was a private enterprise, it of course had to have clients. And who were their clients? Media reports have revealed that the clients of this private enterprise were a number of local governments, and particularly the Beijing representative offices of these local governments. The objective in hiring their services was to utilize their strength to round up petitioners in Beijing, a systematic extralegal application of force of the kind that could not be wielded by local governments themselves as they were subject to legal restrictions.
This private contingent is a joint stock company publicly registered with the Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Administration, and its name is Anyuanding (安元鼎).
This is truly a strange creature: an entity spawned by modern market mechanisms involving the privatization, profit-ization and commercialization of every stage of the administrative work of “stability preservation,” from arrest and detention to physical violence and dispatching petitioners home by force — all of these tasks have become modes of profit-making, translatable into maximum profits.
This remarkable phenomenon has no precedent in China or anywhere else. Put plainly, Anyuanding, this contingent with Chinese characteristics, was essentially a kidnapping company with rights of special license, and its core business was sanguine violence.
Any age might have its reactionaries. Even well-governed America became home to Jim Jones’ quasi-religious organization People’s Temple. So the chief problem here is not the existence of Anyuanding per se. The real issue is: how was it that the reactionary group Anyuanding was able to obtain these special permissions, and how was it able to sign contracts with so many local governments, building up its business? If they had not been favored with these contracts, Anyuanding would not have survived a single day.
Actually, saying they were favored [with these contracts] is not entirely accurate. Because this was not a one-directional bestowal of favors, but rather a mutually beneficial commercial exchange. Anyuanding was able to make money hand over fist, and these local governments benefitted even more richly — they were relieved of a great deal of trouble that had heretofore vexed them, and their political performance and future positions were insured as a result. What great satisfaction to everyone concerned!
Of course, their mutual satisfaction has been purchased at the grave cost of the sacrifice of rights petitioners traveling to Beijing, and at the cost too of our national system of laws. The latter, alas, is the gravest of dangers. The harm done by Anyuanding is about not just naked violence — rather, it is about local governments and their utter desolation of human rights and rule of law. It is about their total dependence upon extralegal violence.
It was the vast market opportunity presented by extralegal violence that spawned the strange phenomenon that is Anyuanding. What we are witnessing at work here is the objective incompetence and recklessness of local governments, whether it’s about government sending their own people to intercept petitioners, or whether it’s about the marketization of this process whereby private companies are entrusted with the task.
We see now that not only are local governments incapable of attaining to the ideal plain of rule of law, but they in fact find it nearly impossible to sustain even the autocratic status quo of the past. All they can manage is the control of people. They’ll take care of those they see as troublemakers first and then look to other things. If they can use money to take care of it, so much the better. If money is of no avail, well, I’m sorry, but they’ll just have to apply their own force directly to handle it. The business has nothing whatsoever to do with sympathies, reason or the law — if the situation is desperate enough, none of that matters.
The recent incident in Yihuang (宜黄), in which several people set fire to themselves to protest eviction from their home, is the perfect footnote to this problem.
After the tragedy of the self-immolation, two female family members of the victims tried to travel to Beijing at the invitation of a Phoenix TV program, but local authorities, who thought they were heading to the capital to petition for official action, conducted a hair-raising mission to intercept them and prevent their departure. Just picture how a handful of women were under siege by scores of riot police, requiring no legal procedures whatsoever, until the women were forced to take refuge in the women’s restroom at an airport. As cruel and brutal as Anyuanding is, the local government of Yihuang is no more gentle or honorable.
All of these outrageous and illegal acts are masked by a high-sounding abstract noun — the so-called “stability preservation” practiced by these local governments. So long as it’s done in the name of stability preservation, any extreme measures can be employed. So long as it’s in the name of stability preservation, there is no need whatsoever for legal restrictions. So long as it’s in the name of stability preservation, anything goes, fair or foul. Neither the Constitution nor any of the rest of our laws have the power to control this so-called “stability preservation” practiced by local governments. Every ugly deed outside the law, every ugly deed undertaken in the name of personal power, is whitewashed as politically correct.
The most pressing question of local governance now facing us is about how we can use the Constitution and the law to bring the “stability preservation” actions of these local governments under control, how we can effectively check these actions within the framework of our Constitution and laws, so we can fundamentally put a stop to this battle being waged by local governments against the people.
Fundamentally A Question of Development Modes
In fact, these petitioners flocking to Beijing with their grievances are perhaps all, without exception, the creation of the local governments themselves. They are fish who have escaped the encircling nets of their local government. Fundamentally, then, this is not a question of how to stop petitioners, and it is not a question, as local governments suggest, of “stability preservation.” These are all derivatives of the core issue, and that is the question of the present nature of development in our country.
It is generally believed that our current mode of development in China is traditional in nature. Traditional in what way? It is traditional in the sense that its nucleus is the same system we had in the past. Development of our economy requires the government’s hand of guidance, and creating dividends requires the government’s protection. No other powers can contend with the government, and so regardless of whether it’s about economic development or the distribution of dividends, the government has pride of place, and it cannot be resisted or hindered in its forward progress.
This is precisely why these local governments have the unbridled audacity to fight their own people, puffed up as they are with a pluck and nerve reminiscent of the age of the Great Leap Forward.
The self-immolation case of Tang Fuzhen in Chongqing, the self-immolation case of the Zhong family in Yihuang — in the minds of local governments cases like these are incidental exceptions. They believe their machine of tyranny can move mountains, and apart from surrender and capitulation what choice do those who face them really have? Clearly, they have underestimated the spirit of resistance. They never supposed that after these people had been deprived of every legal avenue of recourse, that once the iron walls of helplessness closed in, they would take up the only and final weapon left to them.
Who would dare trifle with their own life? That is the basis on which these local government leaders make their decisions. They are brimming with confidence, ready to exert force and psychological pressure to the last in a no-holds-barred struggle. They never consider the extremes those they stand against might go to. Once things actually do backfire, only then are they stricken dumb, at a loss as to how to respond. That’s when they move like madmen to contain the truth, because the truth is something they cannot withstand.
This is the operating logic of our traditional mode of development.
This mode is still capable yet of producing sustained economic growth within a limited period of time, but it is also constantly creating new social problems, and its price is the constant of social conflict. The sustained emergence of these problems and conflicts has at last outpaced the capacity of our current system to deal with them. It has reached such a point that so-called normal channels are utterly powerless to resolve them.
No Time to Be Lost for Political Reforms
Why do we need political reform? The reason is right here before us.
The crux of this development mode is our traditional political system. The stability preservation mechanisms of many of these local governments today are merely adaptations of the traditional political system to suit the age of the market economy.
Against this backdrop, these recent revelations about the private security firm Anyuanding are timely. They can rouse us to a realization of the evils of our traditional system as it has become inbred with the market, and show us the extremes to which these evils can reach.
For this reason, political reforms cannot wait. We can glimpse from this the importance of the fact that Premier Wen Jiabao, at a recent national meeting on lawful administration, and as he emphasized the need for political reform, particularly stressed the importance of building a law-based government, and the need for all offices and agencies to conduct themselves in accord with the law and the Constitution.
What this means is that building a law-based government (法治政府) is at the core of political reform, and a law-based government is as much at odds with our traditional system, which is subjected to no legal checks, as fire is to water.
The chief goal of political reform is to completely clear away the unreasonable aspects of our traditional political system, and this is just a matter of course. To wrestle political power into the cage of law, we must use rule of law to place checks on the government, and not allow local governments to bypass our national laws as suits their needs. If we hope to avoid cancers like Anyuanding, we must start by reaching a consensus on this question so that we can begin the work of political reform.
This editorial originally appeared in Chinese at Time Weekly.

News and propaganda training sessions are too ubiquitous in China to be at all newsworthy. Nor are they particularly interesting. But they do provide a glimpse into how national media policy is being talked about and implemented in China’s cities, provinces and autonomous regions.
The following is a translation of coverage earlier this month of a session on news and propaganda in Ningxia, attended by Wang Chen (王晨), director of the State Council Information Office and effectively China’s top Internet control official.
The Ningxia study session relays the CCP’s media control policy as outlined by President Hu Jintao in his June 2008 speech at People’s Daily, which we have termed “Control 2.0” at the China Media Project.
Control 2.0 is the idea, essentially, that traditional controls on information are insufficient in the new media age, and that officials must use a combination approach to information involving both “control” and “use” of the media. They must, on the one hand, strategically control highly sensitive information, and on the other hand actively push their own agenda and “authoritative” information.
The two most important buzzwords for this policy are “guidance of public opinion,” or yulun daoxiang (舆论导向), the post-Tiananmen term for media control to maintain social and political stability, and “public opinion challenging,” or yulun yindao (舆论引导), the more active agenda-setting dimension. You can think of the first as strategic information control, and the second as strategic information release.

Ningxia Holds Training Session on “News Release and Public Opinion Channeling”
On September 3, the Information Office of the State Council and the Party Committee of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region jointly held a training session in Yinchuan on “News Release and Public Opinion Channeling.” Wang Chen (王晨), a deputy minister of the Central Propaganda Department and director of the State Council Information Office, issued a report on current overall patterns of international public opinion and on raising capacity for public opinion channeling and creating a favorable public opinion environment. Yang Chunguang (杨春光), a member of the party committee and propaganda minister of the autonomous region, led the opening ceremony.
The current training session, which will last for one and a half days, is an important instance of training for thoroughly carrying out the spirit of the 17th National Party Congress and the Fourth Plenum of the 17th Party Committee, thoroughly carrying out the demand on Party and government cadres at various levels in the autonomous region to raise public opinion channeling capacity, improve news and propaganda work and particularly to raise the level of external propaganda work, in order to promote the creation of a favorable public opinion environment for development strides in our region.
Wang Chen gave an excellent report on the significance of doing an effective job of public opinion channeling under the new situation [of global communication and new technologies], of using discourse power effectively, of grasping the initiative [in public opinion channeling], and on the achievements of our country over the past few years in conducting external propaganda and public opinion channeling work. When he spoke about how to do public opinion channeling work in our region effectively, he talked about [the need to] increase the strength of positive propaganda; to conscientiously prepare for sudden-breaking incidents; to actively carry out diversified forms of cultural propaganda; to effectively use the Internet and new media to strengthen Ningxia’s propaganda efforts; to draw support from external forces in order to cooperate with media outside the region; to actively conduct publicity and cooperation with Islamic nations; to achieve unity in thinking, cohering forces and firmly grasping guidance of public opinion, constantly working to create a new prospects for public opinion channeling.
Yang Chunguang (杨春光) said leaders and cadres from various levels must clearly recognize the importance and necessity of doing an effective job of actively channeling public opinion. [He urged those present to] work hard to study the art of channeling public opinion under the new circumstances (新形势下) [of information technology, etc.], increasing their capacity for handling sudden-breaking events and sensitive issues, steadily raising their ability to connect with the media, particularly media from outside the region, effectively using the media to correctly channel public opinion. They must [said Yang] use the opportunity afforded by this training session to resolve outstanding problems in their work, pushing the external propaganda and public opinion channeling work of our region to a new level, and making a contribution to the new round of building up [China’s] western regions and thoroughly building a moderately well-off society (小康社会).

This person you’re talking about was convicted for violating Chinese laws. I think his actions run counter to the principles of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Taiwan’s United Daily News recently ran an opinion poll showing that negative feelings toward mainlanders were on the rise among Taiwanese. As the United Daily News is a newspaper rather favorably disposed to the mainland, poll results like this cannot simply be brushed aside. When I spoke about this with a few Taiwanese who had regular contact with mainlanders, they said their negative feelings about mainlanders were mainly that they were insensible and unreasonable. Objectively speaking, there aren’t, proportionally, too many mainlanders who are completely unreasonable, and a lot of this stink, particularly over the conduct of mainland tourists, has to do with Taiwanese media themselves, which have exaggerated the issue and helped to form the stereotype.
If we’re honest with ourselves, however, we’ll admit that rudeness is something quite common in China. We see it all the time, as when someone cuts in line and then curses you to high heaven when you call them out. On China’s roads, reason must yield all the time as unreason cuts into traffic — how else can we avoid fender benders? In the virtual world of the Internet rudeness is par for the course, and 80-90 percent of comments are vicious attacks. People will spend half a day cursing something you’ve written without even bothering to first understand it. Sometimes reading the headline is enough to set them off. And unreason has now spread to the new medium of the microblog, where readers will curse you and all of your ancestors for a single line you wrote.
Bickering is the way of the Web in China. There are no rules of conduct, no preconditions or demands for logic and consistency. If you can bowl your opponent over with insults you win. This atmosphere of unreason is so all-consuming that even those who take pride in being reasonable are dragged down into the mud.
Certainly, I understand why things are the way they are. We spend our whole lives, from childhood to old age, in a culture and living context of unreason, so that we are totally habituated to it. To this day, our education system actively feeds animosity. Class struggle is no longer the iron rule, but struggle exists everywhere. We haven’t make a clean breast of our own history, and piled-up grievances still run amok.
Look at our films and television dramas and the way they portray war as a simple game of sticking it to the enemy. There is no soul-searching, no nuance.
Our government hopes we, the public, will remain calm and reasonable and not get worked up into an emotional frenzy, but in the practical course of daily life, the government lords it over us with complete unreason. You need only try to take care of business at a government agency to experience this utter deafness to reason. Or you can look, of course, at the peremptory insolence of the whole process of forced demolition and removal. On our internet, if Web control authorities are unhappy with something, they can delete a post just like that, not even bothering to give a reason. Where there is power, there is neither right nor reason.
But even though this is the world we live in, we must nevertheless learn to be reasonable. Each and every one of us, even as we act without reason, hopes to be treated reasonably by others. In moments of disadvantage, all of us, reasonable and unreasonable alike, hope that we will be treated with reason. No one can sustain the advantage forever, forcing others to eat humble pie. Cheat others too far and they’ll resort to violent resistance, playing a deadly game in which we all will crash and burn. In the havoc of unreason, everyone loses out, even those on the cheating end.
I’m quite sure the vast majority of people who pour out their curses online are actually people in positions of weakness in their actual lives, people who are trampled by unreason. They hope for democracy, but they have no idea how to even begin to change their circumstances.
But if we want to improve our lives, the only way is to improve ourselves. Our first step is learning to be reasonable. This is a process that begins with each debate or argument, each time we go online. If we cannot learn to be reasonable, even if one day democracy does indeed come, we will find ourselves unable to accommodate it. We will turn it into a mobocracy, something even more frightful than what we have now.
This essay originally appeared in Chinese at Southern Metropolis Daily.